The Roman Church for centuries observed a vigil before the Feast of All Saints.
All Saints is a Holy Day of Obligation. Make a plan.
We Roman fast before our feasts. The fast was intended also as a way to help the poor, in that it was a time also to deny one’s self and give alms not from one’s excess, but from one’s own need. Vigils – which are penitential – were/are held before feasts and ordinations and also for the sake of pressing petitions. In the Roman Rite the Masses were somewhat simplified and shorn of more joyous elements, for example, no Gloria, Alleluia or Ite.
On 30 October, after the priests have said their usual morning Masses, The World’s Best Sacristan is already setting up Missals and vestments for observance of the Vigil, though strictly speaking it is not in the 1962 calendar. That said, if the Triduum can be used from earlier books and if new saints since 1962 can be incorporated into the older schedule, there shouldn’t be a compelling reason to be worked up about saying the Vigil of All Saints rather than texts of … whatever, since it is a “dies non“. What? A Mass for of Alfonso Rodriguez, SJ (+1617) with the common of a confessor? A Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit? Why not the Vigil, in the true Roman style?
We are our rites… and we are flexible and reasonable.
As Schuster wrote of this day:
When we pray to the saints in heaven they do as Joseph did when his brothers arrived in Egypt. He went before Pharaoh and, full of joy, announced : Fratres mei et domus patris mei . . . venerunt ad me. And the King out of love for Joseph gave to them the land of Gessen.
COLLECT:
Dómine, Deus noster, multiplica super nos grátiam tuam: et, quorum prævenimus gloriósa sollémnia, tríbue subsequi in sancta professione lætítiam.
Multiply Your grace upon us, O Lord our God, and grant that by our holy profession of faith we may attain to the bliss of those whose glorious celebration we anticipate.
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Restore the 54!
In high school, we learned of the first successful slave revolt in the New World — led by Toussaint L’ouverture in what is now Haiti.
Many decades later, i learned (on Duolingo) that his prénom is All Saints.
Indeed! As I was praying Lauds from the Baronius Press edition of the 1961 Roman Breviary, I felt moved to replace the collect prayer of the 23rd Week after Pentecost with the old collect prayer for the Vigil of All Saints from the Lasance Missal:
“O Lord, our God, multiply Thy graces upon us, and grant that joy may follow in the holy praise of those whose glorious festival we anticipate…”
This is definitely one vigil that should be re-examined and restored. If secular society keeps the Vigil of All Saints (Halloween), then certainly the Roman Catholic Church should!
AMDG I like your thinking.
The deep, rich colour of those vestments is stunning.